Wickerham Inn: Zane's Trace, Runaway Slaves, and Morgan's Raiders

The stone inn you're passing was built in the early eighteen hundreds along Zane's Trace, one of the earliest roads cut through Ohio's wilderness.

For decades it served three very different kinds of travelers. Stagecoach passengers on the Trace stopped here for food and a bed. Local tradition holds that enslaved people fleeing north found shelter within these walls, one quiet stop on a network that moved people toward freedom.

Then came the Civil War. In July of eighteen sixty-three, Confederate cavalry under General John Hunt Morgan swept through southern Ohio on a daring and ultimately doomed raid. Local tradition says Morgan's men paused at this same inn.

Three layers of American history, one building: the frontier road, the freedom road, and the war that finally decided which vision of the country would survive.